My name is Harry A. Pitt. Of course, this is not the name I was given at birth, but my old name doesn't matter. Harry A. Pitt is 100% legal. It's even on my driver's license.
I changed my name as a protest against man's enduring tyranny over his true better: woman. More specifically, a protest against just one of the many manifestations of this tyranny evident in our culture. I'm talking about the society-mandated self-mutilation women inflict upon themselves every time they shave the hairs that grow naturally on their bodies. I'm not referring to the legs. A naturally hairy leg is beautiful, yes, but my concerns are directed a little north of this.
I am what a cynical person would label an "armpit fetishist." Personally, I prefer to be called either an "armpit activist" or "underarm connoisseur." That which most men (and most women, so deeply has the folkway become entrenched) find to be distasteful affects me in ways that go beyond sexual arousal.
I have spent hours in the library, nose-deep in archeology, anthropology, psychology, and sociology, attempting to uncover the origins of the contemptible practice of armpit shaving. There is a conspiracy of silence surrounding the matter. Not once have I found a mention of how this needless ritual has become so widespread. Nevertheless, I have formed a few theories.
Possibly, it's due to man's age-old need to make the woman separate so he won't have to face latent homosexual tendencies that he has buried in a shallow psychic grave. These harmless subconscious urges are, for some reason, man's greatest fear. Wars have been fought for the sole purpose of a man proving to himself and to the world that he is not gay! As a result, men like everything black and white. Masculine and feminine. Men have body hair and women do not. Anything that defies the narrow rules and exists in the shadowy grey area in between provokes outrage.
Or it could be that most men are, at heart, pedophiles, and this is a way of keeping women in a prepubescent state of hairlessness. The recurrent image in pornography of women with even their pubic hairs shorn supports this theory.
Another possibility; this is another blatant example of how a woman's self-image is shaped by advertising and the media. There's a lot of money to be made by making women self-conscious about their natural hairiness. The hair removal industry makes millions each year from razors, shaving cream, and other depilatory products.
No doubt it is a combination of all these, but my own personal theory is that an unshaven armpit is a too-blatant look-alike of the female pubic region. A natural woman, nude, with her arms raised, outlines the three points of a pyramid with her patches of hair. This serves as a reminder to man of what he was born from. Women alone have the power to bring life into the world. They are the gatekeepers to heaven. It is this power, the ultimate power, which has so terrified men since the beginning of time that they have used physical, mental, and spiritual slavery to beat the women down. An unshaven armpit is a badge of sexual power. Women who shave are afraid of their own strength.
Most of the conversations I have on this subject end in frustration. People don't like to talk about it. No one wants to admit that it's a problem. Even women. Especially women. They absolutely steadfastly refuse to consider that this is one of the thousand little shackles that keep them bound in sexual slavery. "I shave because that's the way I like it," they invariably say. They cannot understand that they have been conditioned to prefer the unnatural look by years of exposure to our male-dominated society.
The tradition is carried on primarily from mother to daughter. The mother shaves and teaches her daughter to do the same, just as her own mother (also brainwashed) did for her. The custom is reinforced in the media (unshaven women have been made the butt of a joke in many television shows and comedy routines) and by the girl's peer group (the unshaven pubescent is chastised by her friends, possibly ridiculed by male peers.) By the time a woman reaches adulthood, the behavior is firmly established. The shorn look has become linked to "normalcy" in her mind. Women whose only ambition is to be normal do not interest me in the least.
Because of my beliefs, my friends, family, and co-workers view me as some sort of deviant. Many of them even refuse to call me Harry, using instead my hated given name: Barry. Barry Unger. Can you believe it? My mother, the esteemed Celia Unger (a firm believer in shaving, by the way) actually christened her first and only son Barry, after some uncle similarly cursed. I loathed that name for twenty-two years until I finally gained the courage and resources to have it changed. Barry Unger is dead. Long live Harry A. Pitt.
I met Sheila at Max's, a bar where I used to sing on open-mike nights. I noticed her as soon as she walked in. I was sitting beside the stage, drinking a beer while waiting to go on, when she slid in the door; a tall, beautiful black woman in a red dress. The dress had a tank top and she wasn't wearing a jacket.
She had The Look about her. I can usually tell even before I see a woman's underarms if she shaves or not. The natural women always have something extra in their eyes, or maybe in the way they move, that always gives it away. I classified the situation as an Armpit Watch. Conditions were very good for a positive sighting.
I watched her, growing more and more deliciously frustrated by the second. She went to the bar, ordered a drink, walked across the room to talk to someone for a few seconds, and then found a seat at a table by herself in the center of the room. She refused to raise her arms. When she did raise them, she wasn't facing in my direction. It drove me crazy. She knew how to get my attention.
I was so entranced that I missed my introduction and did not step out onto the stage for a whole minute. Then I staggered around the tiny stage, drunk with thoughts of her, unable for several frantic seconds to find the microphone.
Once in the spotlight, though, I was fine. My eyes scanned the dark room and I found Her. I couldn't tell for sure, but I imagined that her eyes were now on me expectantly. I stared right at her, strummed my guitar, and sang: "This one's for the women out there . . ."
"Armpit Politics" by Harry A. Pitt
(Chorus)
Armpit Politics, sweeping the land.
Armpit Politics, sisters hand in hand.
Armpit Politics, don't you understand,
That armpit politics will wait for no man?
Male tyranny surrounds you every day.
You can close your eyes, but it won't go away.
